I have been asked about doing a triple mount for a customer with the middle mount painted. As I am quite new to all this, what are the rules on painting mountboards when it comes to conservation standards? Are there specific types of paint to use? I have seen acrylic seems to be the main type used, are other types allowed like oil? Bearing in mind the mount will not be touching the art.Thanks

I prefer to use artists acrylic paints, when I can and always check the manufacturers published information for colour permanence and opacity before deciding to buy. Some paints are transparent, or semi-transparent and do not cover properly even after many coats of paint.

Be particularly careful about the colour permanence when cloosing reds, some reds have very poor colour permanence. Also be aware that even when you are mixing more that one colour of paint together, it is still important to get paints with really good colour permanence. If you don't the colour you mixed may not stay the same colour of time.

There are times when I varnish over a painted mount with matte acrylic varnish to get the best possible matte finish, as I think that dead matte looks the business.

I am going to stop short of specifically recommending brands. Different people will all have the preferred brands and there will be various reasons why each one of us likes a particular brand and the fact that we all make different choices may reflect different factors in each case. I'm not encouraging anyone to specifically follow the paints that I choose, but I will try my best to explain why I make these particular choices. I believe in making your own informed choices.

So to start with I'm out to get best value for money, while also choosing really good quality paints, that work well when using my own techniques and brushwork, but also are specified as having top colour permanence and in the case I am looking to choose colours that have fully opaque pigments. I like to buy paints that I have regular use for in 500ml pots and therefore gain a better price by buying a larger quantity.

These relevant properties will not always be best when picking a particular colour from a particular manufacturer, so sometimes you won't always choose the same manufacturer to get the paint characteristics that you are looking for. This is just one of those facts of life and that's how it is.

In my selection of favourite paints you will find the following brands; Amsterdam standard range, AV (Acrylicos Valleyo), Craig and Rose 1829 chalky emulsion and occasionally System 4 by Daler Rowney. Not every paint from these manufacturers will have the same colour permanence, opacity, or other properties so chech the manufacturers data sheets before you by.

Just in case any of you have missed this, acrylic paints in these ranges are all chosen to be value for money, so not every colour in these ranges will have the same specification compared to top of the range so called artists quality paints, but there are plenty of top rated colour permanence paints in there if you are prepared to find out which ones they are!

Bit of history.Up to about the year 1995 most of the mount boards used in Denmark were all painted by hand, with a roller, including the bevel edgeFramers bought one white board and probably 2.5mm - 3.0 mm caliper in size 100 x 140cms.Big tub of white wall paper emulsion, plus lots of little concentrated tubes dyes/pigments Mixed to get colour required, painted late in the afternoon.Left to dry over night Check next morning, if OK frame, if not another coatIt took a long time for any of the big mount board co's to get any sales going.Today 100 x 140 cms is still the default size in Denmark

Do we have any Danish framers on this forum to ask if any still follow the painting method

Keith Hewitt wrote:Bit of history.Up to about the year 1995 most of the mount boards used in Denmark were all painted by hand, with a roller, including the bevel edgeFramers bought one white board and probably 2.5mm - 3.0 mm caliper in size 100 x 140cms.Big tub of white wall paper emulsion, plus lots of little concentrated tubes dyes/pigments Mixed to get colour required, painted late in the afternoon.Left to dry over night Check next morning, if OK frame, if not another coatIt took a long time for any of the big mount board co's to get any sales going.Today 100 x 140 cms is still the default size in Denmark

Do we have any Danish framers on this forum to ask if any still follow the painting method